Our cohorts invite the person responsible for ministry with children and a pastor from a congregation to join colleagues from other faith communities for mutual support, learning, strategizing, and experimentation.
What Congregations Gain Through this Partnership
Duke Divinity School provides a two-year supportive learning cohort in company with other leaders from a variety of congregations.
- Teaching and reflection with experts in child development, theology, worship, and forming intergenerational communities
- Strategies for implementing or strengthening child-friendly worship practices tailored to the congregational setting that are not “childish”
- Shared research findings on how best to support children’s faith formation, including through congregational worship
- Resources to help congregations sustain and build upon worship, fully inclusive of all generations
What Duke Divinity School Hopes to Learn Through this Partnership
- Factors promoting or preventing children’s participation in communal worship
- How children express, embody, and practice their faith
- Leadership styles, practices, and cultures that promote and sustain children’s faith
- How increasing inclusion of children changes the character and mission of congregations
- How we may contribute to the growing dialogue of children’s full participation in communal worship
Participation and Engagement
- Cohorts are organized denominationally, ecumenically, non-denominationally, and according to region, size, or context.
- Cohorts begin in January 2026 and January 2027, and last for two years.
- Cohorts meet via Zoom or in person ten times a year, led by a theologically trained Cohort Facilitator with deep experience in children’s ministry.
Cohort members can expect to grow in their appreciation of children’s faith nurtured through worship, to better perceive the barriers and the possibilities for children’s worship participation in their contexts, and to receive support in developing strategies and practices to welcome children in new and faithful ways.